Video: Gaza mourns cultural center destroyed by Israel

Earlier this month, Israeli forces bombed the Said Mish’al Center for Culture and Science in Gaza to the ground, claiming it was being used by Hamas for military operations. The center was beloved among Gazans and was celebrated as a place where people could express their pain, grief, happiness, and perseverance through song, dance, and theater. Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza mourned the destruction of the center, which had survived three Israeli offensives over the past decade.

Aside from being a place where people could go to to escape their hardships for a moment, the center was also a space where, according to the director, the people of Gaza resisted the occupation by preserving the Palestinian culture and passing it on to future generations. As Center Director Sameer Mish’al told Mondoweiss, “The occupation has always tried to stifle the voice of the Palestinian people. This place was like a beam of light. Through our work, we protected our culture.”

I found an old French history magazine today which included an article about the French occupation of Germany in 1945.

A number of French soldiers were murdered.
« The only technical solution so this situation doesn’t recur is to shoot, to terrorise. It is the Chateaubriand business – 30 hostages murdered. It is Tulle- 86 people hanged. The ultimate is called Oradour sur Glane: village exterminated including women and children. It is a simple question of scale. Objectively there is no other solution and it leads to the worst »

Within 11 years France and Germany were allies. The violence was no longer needed.

Israel has been terrorizing Palestinians and destroying their property in the name of revenge for 70 years. It does not work because Jews and Palestinians have to live together. If the French army was still killing Germans, France would also be a clusterfuck like Israel is.

They are wiping the Palestinians off the map in every way (while whining about being victims of the same). They are using the occupation to steal, obliterate, murder, and erase the very existence of the Palestinians. Islam suffers from the acts of radical extremists, and Judaism suffer from the acts of the zionists. The difference being the zionists pretend to be victims, and a democracy.

“Former Foreign Ministry director-general invokes South Africa comparisons. ‘Joint Israel-West Bank’ reality is an apartheid state”
EXCERPT: “Similarities between the ‘original apartheid’ as it was practiced in South Africa and the situation in ISRAEL [my emphasis] and the West Bank today ‘scream to the heavens,’ added [Alon] Liel, who was Israel’s ambassador in Pretoria from 1992 to 1994. There can be little doubt that the suffering of Palestinians is not less intense than that of blacks during apartheid-era South Africa, he asserted.” (Times of Israel, February 21, 2013)

Ronnie Kasrils, a key player in the struggle against the former South African apartheid regime, minister for intelligence and a devout Jew: “The Palestinian minority in Israel has for decades been denied basic equality in health, education, housing and land possession, solely because it is not Jewish. The fact that this minority is allowed to vote hardly redresses the rampant injustice in all other basic human rights. They are excluded from the very definition of the ‘Jewish state’, and have virtually no influence on the laws, or political, social and economic policies. Hence, their similarity to the black South Africans [under apartheid].” (The Guardian, 25 May 2005)

In its 2015 Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, published in 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor acknowledges the “institutional and societal discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel.” (U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor)

“Construction, Not Destruction”
“While Israeli Arabs constitute 20 percent of the population, Arab communities’ jurisdictions occupy just 2.5 percent of the state’s land area, and the process of approving new construction in Arab towns takes decades.” (Haaretz Editorial, April 4, 2017)

The effect of Israel’s blatantly racist “Citizenship Law” and more than fifty other restrictions Arab citizens have to endure is well expressed by writer and Knesset member, Ahmed Tibi, “…dutifully defining the state [of Israel] as ‘Jewish and democratic,’ ignores the fact that in practice ‘democratic’ refers to Jews, and the Arabs are nothing more than citizens without citizenship.” (Ma’ariv, 1.6.2005)

I suggest that you look at photos of the destruction in Gaza. No one in those buildings could have survived. 250,000 Palestinians were left homeless, but alive because they had been warned that their homes would be bombed & they should leave. Around 2,000 died.

If Israel wanted to erase the very existence of the Palestinians, then why did Israel warn the Palestinians before dropping the bombs?

m1945: “If Israel wanted to erase the very existence of the Palestinians, then why did Israel warn the Palestinians before dropping the bombs?”

Because they wanted them to leave their sheltering homes without knowing where to run in the open and which other possible sheltering home was targeted, too.

That part of the implementation of the Apartheid Junta’s Dahiya Doctrine which involves “the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine

Shorter: Large scale state terrorism and collective punishment.

For further information on this war crimes read the Nuremberg Trials against Nazi Germany.

That is a very naive sounding question. I suggest you look at the shrinking map of Palestine. I suggest you look at the number of casualties every time Israel decides to “mow the lawn” or resort to “collective punishment”. I suggest you look at the number of unarmed civilians killed when precision bombs are sent into civilians structures, and entire families are wiped out, including babies. I suggest you look at the UN shelters that were deliberately bombed, despite numerous warnings by the UN about their locations.
I suggest you stop trying to defend the indefensible. Israel is one of the most brutal occupiers in our lifetime.

I was thinking about global numbers of Jews v Palestinians.
There are 13m Jews and about 11m Palestinians. Both groups need a state that includes Jerusalem.
The US non Orthodox population is falling. Bennett says it is a priority. The Jewish core is Orthodox and lunatic. The Palestinian population is growing.
Get some popcorn in.

Israel = state
Nonjewish people: Palestinian refugees
keeps expelled = denies them the right to return and citizenship
to exclude … = so that they can’t vote

Apartheid: “… following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them: […]

Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the … right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, …”

Please explain how Palestinian refugees can participate and I will explain to you again why Israel has been a full bore Apartheid state since it denied Nonjews to return to their country and acquire citizenship.

See the tranfer of nationality according to the partition plan:
“Palestinian citizens residing in Palestine outside the City of Jerusalem, as well as Arabs and Jews who, not holding Palestinian citizenship, reside in Palestine outside the City of Jerusalem shall, upon the recognition of independence, become citizens of the State in which they are resident and enjoy full civil and political rights.”

Compare this to Palestine’s nationality law from 1925 regarding:

“Turkish subjects habitually resident in the territory of Palestine upon the 1st day of August 1924 shall become Palestine citizens.”

Compare this to Israel’s Apartheid nationality law and its iutterly inhumane perversion of the principle of being habitually resident and which excludes Nonjewish expellees from becoming Israelis, because it managed to keep them expelled:

“Nationality by residence in Israel

(a) A person who, immediately before the establishment of the State, was a Palestinian citizen and who does not become an Israel national under section 2, shall become an Israel national with effect from the day of the establishment of the State if:

(1) he was registered on the 4th Adar, 5712 (1st March 1952) as an inhabitant under the Registration of Inhabitants Ordinance, 5709-1949; and

(2) he is an inhabitant of Israel on the day of the coming into force of this Law; and

(3) he was in Israel, or in an area which became Israel territory after the establishment of the State, from the day of the establishment of the State to the day of the coming into force of this Law, or entered Israel legally during that period.”

This would have been the Non-Apartheid version:
“Palestinian subjects habitually resident in the territory of Israel upon the 15 May of 1948 (or the day of its recognition) shall become Israeli citizens.”

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